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Our city's wealth can be seen in our students' belongings

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Our city's wealth can be seen in our students' belongings

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It is very easy to find a community of the same race as me

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It is very easy to find a community of the same race as me

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Neighborhoods are organized into neat rows

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Neighborhoods are organized into neat rows

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This exact floor layout is very common in this neighborhood

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This exact floor layout is very common in this neighborhood

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To what extent is the Santa Clarita Valley a modern-day Levittown?

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To what extent is the Santa Clarita Valley a modern-day Levittown?

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Both towns share most fundamentals, from structure and layout of neighborhoods to the wealth of residents, but do still have certain differences, like how minorities are treated. It goes to show that, in the half-century or so that has elapsed since the development of these towns, the process itself to create the town has hardly been touched, making it difficult to find many differences between the two at all.

One huge difference,  but also a  similarity, between the two cities can be found in their racial diversity. In the mid-twentieth century Levittown homes, Blacks were not allowed to purchase homes to live in the neighborhoods and that was it. No exceptions. According to Lambert, policy would explicitly state that only Caucasian people could stay in these neighborhoods and that anyone of any other racial descent would be turned away. Obviously our little mixing pot is nowhere near this level of racism, with African Americans, Korean Americans, and those of Hispanic or Filipino descent being prevalent throughout our diverse city. Our non-white communities are widespread, with Mexican markets like Vallarta sitting no less than a couple blocks away from sushi restaurants and Korean markets, showing just how large each ethnic community has become in our valley. However, they are both still predominantly white communities. Taking a cursory glance at our school's census and those of Valencia and Hart quickly show that whites are always at least 50% of the population and have a clear majority.

Both towns are built for a specific economic class in mind. When Levittowns were first beginning to be built, they were advertised as affordable bargains to the growing wealthy middle class and the middle class only. This led to a homogenization of class within the city itself as hundreds flocked to purchase these mass-produced homes, everybody making relatively similar amounts of money. While not as homogenized as Levittown, Santa Clarita still does notice a similar trend. Yes, there are some exorbitantly wealthy people who live in the large mansions dotted around by the golf course, but a large majority of people living here live in houses or townhouses, all falling within a price range that only upper middle class individuals can afford. Similarly to Levittown, you will not really find middle to low class families in Santa Clarita.

Neighborhoods are also very structurally and efficiently planned out. Levittown houses all had almost identical structure and layout in order to save costs of designing unique homes and to be able to mass produce houses as quickly as possible. Thus, you would end up with endlessly sprawling rows of identical houses that just have slightly varying paintjobs, but are ultimately all the same 1290 square feet 3-bedroom house as advertised in PIC magazine. This trend can be found in almost any Santa Clarita neighborhood. The Pallisades, the Arts, and Westridge all have the same format all throughout the entirety of the neighborhood. Within my own neighborhood, Woodlands, two out of three of my mom's friends living in Woodlands live in a house with the exact same layout as my own, similar to how Levittown houses were just copy-pasted down along the street.

Kimball writes in his article about how quickly the spinach farms in Pennsylvania were converted into Levittowns for people to live in, just like how Santa Clarita was converted from onion farms into a bustling suburb. The speed at which neighborhoods were erected was unheard of at the time, with people like Lambert claiming statistics as high as 36 houses a day. This speed of development is yet another similarity between the two cities. I was always astounded by this one picture that was framed in Stevenson Ranch Elementary's office. It was an aerial view of the school, with nothing but a single road leading up to it on the hill and no homes around it at all, dated less than 10 years back. Both towns were built in the blink of an eye to meet the demand of consumers.

Kimball also writes about the vast amount of public facilities and activities available, from schools, malls, parking lots, pools. churches, garden clubs, newspapers, doctors, markets, buses, etc. Infrastructure is completely developed so that residents can live comfortably. Even when I go to swim practice, we can warm up by playing basketball in the sports complex or by going on  a run on the hiking trails right outside. Then we walk into the aquatic center, no less than 500 feet away, that has a small water park and even a skate park and soccer field with a dog park right across the parking lot. And this ignores all the wonderful programs offered, from Special Olympic basketball teams to flag football for your little second-grader. In either town, the options for things to do are almost limitless due to the sheer number of facilities available.

Class, design, speed, and infrastructure are all nearly identical between Levittown and Santa Clarita; almost nothing has changed over time. However, thankfully, blatant racism is no longer an issue and SCV is very accepting of different cultures.